True Apache can't stop SCO from using past or present versions of Apache (license changes aren't retroactive), but they can keep them from using future versions.
But I'd love to see GPL software agressively come down on SCO. SCO needs to be voted off the island.
For all residential dial-up and broadband accounts:
1. Lock down port 25. No outgoing email, except through the ISP's servers.
2. Each account (internet access account, not email account) can only send 50 emails per day. More than sufficient for any normal user.
3. Any account that surpasses 50 emails per day is automatically cutoff from sending email until a review of their email traffic can be made.
4. 100% of outgoing email should be virus-scanned. A single offense cuts off emailing priveledges for 24 hours.
These simple steps would put the responsibility for their computers back on the shoulders of consumers, where it belongs.
As it is, if Aunt Bertha gets a virus and sends out spam like a workhorse, she doesn't know or care. As soon as she can't send that recipe to her sister because she's been cutoff, she'll know, she'll care, and she'll do something about it.
This can and should be implemented immediately.
We now return to our previously scheduled programming.
1) Control == Profits, or at least that is the plan in Redmond. If Microsoft ~controls~ the desktop, they can profit thereby. If not, why even put out a free browser? Not for the profit. Not for the ad revenue. Not to be nice. It is for control. And when you are in control, you can make the rules about where the money goes (into your bank account).
2) I care if they support open standards, and every other user of the internet should, too. To profit from the rise of computers and the internet, through means that will hasten its demise, is both short-sighted and unnecessary. And I never said being agressive was bad.
I think Intel would like to beat the competition, their actions would indicate there are reasonable limits they'd go to in order to squash them.
I dare anyone to point me to a business that wouldn't want to squash the competition.
Open your eyes. Apparently you are unaware of the relationship between Red Hat and the umpteen companies that ship derivative products using their source code! There is a huge difference between wanting to be as profitable as reasonably possible (no problem) and seeking to destroy the competition through any means possible (problem).
The business world is like the sports world. If the rules were taken out of basketball the game may be entertaining to those with room in their heads for all-star wrestling, but it would destroy the game for those that loved it, and would spell the end of basketball.
Likewise, if we are to avoid such a fate in computers, the internet, and indeed all businesses and industries, the collective parties involved must obey the common rules of decency. Otherwise, the market will simply be full of Enron's, Qwest's, SCO's, Verisigns, and the like.
Fortunately Firefox is on the rise, because it has pretty good CSS & JavaScript support, and adheres closely to the standard.
It doesn't support the full standards yet, but that is better than supporting only part of the standard and throwing in your own version for bad measure.
I agree, Netscape started the whole browser war thing, Microsoft just perfected it. I love Mozilla, Firefox, etc, but I despise Netscape (and Microsoft in some ways, and AOL in all ways).
Seriously, though, Microsoft's flaunting and intentional breaking of CSS, HTML, JavaScript, XML, (to name a few) have made my life as a web app designer a lot harder.
If the existing specs were stuck to religiously, think of how much more productive the internet IT world would be, and how much consumers would benefit.
On the one hand, the need exists. Corporations (and governments in the case of teachers) really do abuse their employees and something needs to empower them.
On the other hand, sometimes I think the unions are worse than the corporations in their actions. Unions have always felt so mafia-like in their actions and attitudes. When I used to work construction the subs that were entrepreneurs or worked for small businesses would work circles around the union workers in both quality and quantitiy. Union workers jobs were so protected whether they worked or not that they'd drag the job on for months, just for job security (not knowing if there would be another job immediately waiting after this one). We got paid by the foot (doing exterior caulking) and we busted our butts and did a great job, because it was out butts on the line.
I think the only defense for Mom & Pop shops is a change of thinking (one of the weakest points for many Mom & Pop shops, that have done things the same way for 40 years). Specifically, a shift to more service & custom oriented business models, with exceptional customers service / support / and relations.
In my little town the only computer stores that survive are those with great service. Competing on price alone kills them every time, regardless of the money spent on advertising and gimicks.
1) I think a company can be small and still have a large influence. We have a new product coming out specifically to help people become webmasters and succeed. My motivating force is to give others the same opportunity I've had (I love working for myself and am a firm believer in the entrepreneurial spirit). I would like nothing more than for thousands of families to have their dads home half the day because my product showed them how to make a good, honest living in half the time).
Microsoft is going to implode because of their attitude towards the consumer. If they can manipulate us to make more money, they will.
Look at their document formats. They get more and more proprietary and more and more locked down. This is bad for businesses.
There was a time when you would send a word or excel document to someone via email, and if they didn't have Word or Excel, they couldn't open it.
Microsoft it still fighting very hard to make that a reality again. Fortunate for us there are great open source alternatives like Open Office (which rocks!). Open Office is brilliant, all of the functionality (that matters) of Office, in a 35 MB free download.
I agree that the consolidation of most industries to mega-corporations is a bad thing.
AT&T (which now is joined by a bunch of other gorillas), Microsoft, even Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has created a lot of jobs, but they have also put under a lot of mom & pop shops and family businesses.
I just don't like to see companies get so freaking large (Wal-Mart now employs more people than the government). The potential for abuses from huge corporations is just a lot higher than for a collection of small businesses serving the same market.
We only have this right because of an anti-trust lawsuit brought on by the government against Microsoft. Microsoft did not give this right up easily or without a very big fight.
Dell may not ship computers with no OS, but they ship them with a free OS you can remove in 2 minutes, so that is the same to me.
The point is I don't want to be forced to pay for a Microsoft OS I'm not going to use, and after the antitrust lawsuit that is the case.
Had the government not stepping in with major anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft, Dell wouldn't be selling Linux servers.
If Microsoft could still get away with stiff-arming Dell this way, they would be. It took an act of congress (almost literally) to get them to stop in this one instance.
I imagine there are plenty of ways they still manipulate the OEM's.
I don't think I said anything to give you the indication I don't give back.
In fact I'm very active in the mailing lists of a number of the packages I use, and try to provide answers to other users.
Several of my suggestions for improvements to PHP have been implemented.
And yes, I have donated to projects I believe in. And, I believe that spending time on Slashdot as an open source evangelist is giving back in some small way (as you are, so thanks for the discussion).
So you're saying if the bar around the corner started slipping a little bit of meth in every drink to increase sales, which it probably would, you're OK with that?
Afterall, the point of a business it to make money "and that's why sometimes it does bad things".
I don't think it is how much a person or company makes, but how they make it, that is important.
Or maybe you just work for uSight or a company like it. Read more.
There are good and bad ways to make money. There are rules, and for good reason.
Ever heard of punch cards & paper tape? Really hard to secure those.
The Altair had just started coming out, and it was just accepted that people would share and improve upon your software, and that would circulate around and you'd enjoy the benefit of that.
Then Bill Gates out and out called the whole hobbiest market (of which he was recently a part and benefactor of) "thieves" for stealing his software and changing it.
Microsoft is a very, very competent company full of enthusiastic and qualified programmers.
They do have their bugs, of course, but when they are this strategic and consistent (with exceptions, of course) from IE 5 to 5.5 to 6, they don't get any benefit of the doubt from me.
I'm not excusing other corporations from their actions. There are plenty of bad corporations (that are highly profitable), this discussion just happens to be about Microsoft.
And for the record, I haven't worn a Nike shoe in probably 6 or 7 years, specifically for their track record with sweatshops. And I think their a ripoff.
Slashdot Mirror
True Apache can't stop SCO from using past or present versions of Apache (license changes aren't retroactive), but they can keep them from using future versions.
But I'd love to see GPL software agressively come down on SCO. SCO needs to be voted off the island.
Who cares?
Apache still ~controls~ their license, and can certainly say who does and doesn't use that.
Any open source project, under any license that can, should restrict SCO from any versions they can, past and present.
That'll give SCO a sense of the value of the community they are stabbing in the back.
There is a perfectly simple solution for this.
For all residential dial-up and broadband accounts:
1. Lock down port 25. No outgoing email, except through the ISP's servers.
2. Each account (internet access account, not email account) can only send 50 emails per day. More than sufficient for any normal user.
3. Any account that surpasses 50 emails per day is automatically cutoff from sending email until a review of their email traffic can be made.
4. 100% of outgoing email should be virus-scanned. A single offense cuts off emailing priveledges for 24 hours.
These simple steps would put the responsibility for their computers back on the shoulders of consumers, where it belongs.
As it is, if Aunt Bertha gets a virus and sends out spam like a workhorse, she doesn't know or care. As soon as she can't send that recipe to her sister because she's been cutoff, she'll know, she'll care, and she'll do something about it.
This can and should be implemented immediately.
We now return to our previously scheduled programming.
1) Control == Profits, or at least that is the plan in Redmond. If Microsoft ~controls~ the desktop, they can profit thereby. If not, why even put out a free browser? Not for the profit. Not for the ad revenue. Not to be nice. It is for control. And when you are in control, you can make the rules about where the money goes (into your bank account).
2) I care if they support open standards, and every other user of the internet should, too. To profit from the rise of computers and the internet, through means that will hasten its demise, is both short-sighted and unnecessary. And I never said being agressive was bad.
I think Intel would like to beat the competition, their actions would indicate there are reasonable limits they'd go to in order to squash them.
I dare anyone to point me to a business that wouldn't want to squash the competition.
Open your eyes. Apparently you are unaware of the relationship between Red Hat and the umpteen companies that ship derivative products using their source code! There is a huge difference between wanting to be as profitable as reasonably possible (no problem) and seeking to destroy the competition through any means possible (problem).
The business world is like the sports world. If the rules were taken out of basketball the game may be entertaining to those with room in their heads for all-star wrestling, but it would destroy the game for those that loved it, and would spell the end of basketball.
Likewise, if we are to avoid such a fate in computers, the internet, and indeed all businesses and industries, the collective parties involved must obey the common rules of decency. Otherwise, the market will simply be full of Enron's, Qwest's, SCO's, Verisigns, and the like.
No, I haven't. Another post explained it.
I guess I need to...
I don't know what that is supposed to be.
Apparently you posted that article "POST FIX", as in "after your last fix of meth".
The best solution for pay and performance being tied together is to work for yourself (which I do, and love).
That being said, it isn't for everyone, and it isn't easy.
But I wouldn't have it any other way. I can't think of a single job I'd choose over my current situation.
Fortunately Firefox is on the rise, because it has pretty good CSS & JavaScript support, and adheres closely to the standard.
It doesn't support the full standards yet, but that is better than supporting only part of the standard and throwing in your own version for bad measure.
I agree, Netscape started the whole browser war thing, Microsoft just perfected it. I love Mozilla, Firefox, etc, but I despise Netscape (and Microsoft in some ways, and AOL in all ways).
Hey, have you been peeking in my cubicle?!?
Seriously, though, Microsoft's flaunting and intentional breaking of CSS, HTML, JavaScript, XML, (to name a few) have made my life as a web app designer a lot harder.
If the existing specs were stuck to religiously, think of how much more productive the internet IT world would be, and how much consumers would benefit.
Thanks a lot Bill. I'll send you a Bill.
Yeah, I don't know what to think of unions.
On the one hand, the need exists. Corporations (and governments in the case of teachers) really do abuse their employees and something needs to empower them.
On the other hand, sometimes I think the unions are worse than the corporations in their actions. Unions have always felt so mafia-like in their actions and attitudes. When I used to work construction the subs that were entrepreneurs or worked for small businesses would work circles around the union workers in both quality and quantitiy. Union workers jobs were so protected whether they worked or not that they'd drag the job on for months, just for job security (not knowing if there would be another job immediately waiting after this one). We got paid by the foot (doing exterior caulking) and we busted our butts and did a great job, because it was out butts on the line.
I think the only defense for Mom & Pop shops is a change of thinking (one of the weakest points for many Mom & Pop shops, that have done things the same way for 40 years). Specifically, a shift to more service & custom oriented business models, with exceptional customers service / support / and relations.
In my little town the only computer stores that survive are those with great service. Competing on price alone kills them every time, regardless of the money spent on advertising and gimicks.
1) I think a company can be small and still have a large influence. We have a new product coming out specifically to help people become webmasters and succeed. My motivating force is to give others the same opportunity I've had (I love working for myself and am a firm believer in the entrepreneurial spirit). I would like nothing more than for thousands of families to have their dads home half the day because my product showed them how to make a good, honest living in half the time).
2) It is better for it, thank you.
Microsoft is going to implode because of their attitude towards the consumer. If they can manipulate us to make more money, they will.
Look at their document formats. They get more and more proprietary and more and more locked down. This is bad for businesses.
There was a time when you would send a word or excel document to someone via email, and if they didn't have Word or Excel, they couldn't open it.
Microsoft it still fighting very hard to make that a reality again. Fortunate for us there are great open source alternatives like Open Office (which rocks!). Open Office is brilliant, all of the functionality (that matters) of Office, in a 35 MB free download.
I agree that the consolidation of most industries to mega-corporations is a bad thing.
AT&T (which now is joined by a bunch of other gorillas), Microsoft, even Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has created a lot of jobs, but they have also put under a lot of mom & pop shops and family businesses.
I just don't like to see companies get so freaking large (Wal-Mart now employs more people than the government). The potential for abuses from huge corporations is just a lot higher than for a collection of small businesses serving the same market.
We only have this right because of an anti-trust lawsuit brought on by the government against Microsoft. Microsoft did not give this right up easily or without a very big fight.
Dell may not ship computers with no OS, but they ship them with a free OS you can remove in 2 minutes, so that is the same to me.
The point is I don't want to be forced to pay for a Microsoft OS I'm not going to use, and after the antitrust lawsuit that is the case.
EXACTLY my point!
Had the government not stepping in with major anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft, Dell wouldn't be selling Linux servers.
If Microsoft could still get away with stiff-arming Dell this way, they would be. It took an act of congress (almost literally) to get them to stop in this one instance.
I imagine there are plenty of ways they still manipulate the OEM's.
I don't think I said anything to give you the indication I don't give back.
In fact I'm very active in the mailing lists of a number of the packages I use, and try to provide answers to other users.
Several of my suggestions for improvements to PHP have been implemented.
And yes, I have donated to projects I believe in. And, I believe that spending time on Slashdot as an open source evangelist is giving back in some small way (as you are, so thanks for the discussion).
Then I guess I'm glad I own a small company instead of a big one.
The majority of the satisfaction and happiness I derive from my company is not derived from the money I make, but rather how I make it.
I don't see why hiding ~any~ file extensions is a good idea. It just promotes ignorance.
I like how they've protected the Windows directory with a warning, then you can go in.
But hiding any file extensions is more dangerous to consumers than letting them see them.
And yes, I'm starting to think that consumers are a miracle because they've broken statistics: The average consumer is somehow really below average.
So you're saying if the bar around the corner started slipping a little bit of meth in every drink to increase sales, which it probably would, you're OK with that?
Afterall, the point of a business it to make money "and that's why sometimes it does bad things".
I don't think it is how much a person or company makes, but how they make it, that is important.
Or maybe you just work for uSight or a company like it. Read more.
There are good and bad ways to make money. There are rules, and for good reason.
Ever heard of punch cards & paper tape? Really hard to secure those.
The Altair had just started coming out, and it was just accepted that people would share and improve upon your software, and that would circulate around and you'd enjoy the benefit of that.
Then Bill Gates out and out called the whole hobbiest market (of which he was recently a part and benefactor of) "thieves" for stealing his software and changing it.
They must just all be Boy Scouts, doing their good deed for the day.
Seriously, MySQL is a very profitable company from their support of their free product, as are many other companies.
Others do it for the good of mankind, and work full time jobs to provide for their families.
I say, "Bless you" and "Thank you" to these people. They have created jobs and industries for hundreds of thousands of people directly and indirectly.
It may or may not be money, but they do and will have their reward, including my thanks and praise.
Oh, and speaking of which, when was the last time you helped an old lady across the street?
Microsoft is a very, very competent company full of enthusiastic and qualified programmers.
They do have their bugs, of course, but when they are this strategic and consistent (with exceptions, of course) from IE 5 to 5.5 to 6, they don't get any benefit of the doubt from me.
I'd rather be called paranoid than blind I guess.
I'm not excusing other corporations from their actions. There are plenty of bad corporations (that are highly profitable), this discussion just happens to be about Microsoft.
And for the record, I haven't worn a Nike shoe in probably 6 or 7 years, specifically for their track record with sweatshops. And I think their a ripoff.
To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
You would have made an excellent Enron executive!!!
Many, many, many of the worlds ills are directly related to company executives without a conscience.
Corporations don't make decisions and take actions, people do.
Thanks for being part of the problem instead of part of the solution.